


Kiss With a Fist

by uchiha_s



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bondage, Boxing, F/M, Light BDSM, No Plot, Onesided Stannis/Sansa, PWP, Post WWII but takes place in Westeros, Ramsay is His Own Warning, underground fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 07:26:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14636964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uchiha_s/pseuds/uchiha_s
Summary: Oneshot, Post-WWII AU, basically porn with very little plot. Jon fights to deal with his guilt and rage. Sansa watches Jon fight to deal with her guilt and rage. They live next to each other for years, never acknowledging the dark nights of sweat and blood, until a neighborhood menace breaks into Sansa’s home.





	Kiss With a Fist

**Author's Note:**

> This is just really graphic porn, honestly. It has no depth and is pure filth. Don't like, don't read.

It was the perfect kind of late spring night, where the day had been warm and sunny but the night was cool, the air heady and fragrant with lilac and grass, the sky violet and blushing with sunset, silhouetting the trees and casting the world in romance. As Sansa passed by the baseball field she heard the clap of the ball against wood, heard the pleasurable shouts of boys playing and girls watching them in the last bit of light.

It was a night meant for romance, the sort of night in which the world wanted you to fall in love. And, indeed, on the edge of the field, there was a whole bench of girls in their prettiest dresses, ribbons in their hair, giggling and whispering, eyes bright as they fixed on the boys who knew they were looking, knew they were waiting.

None of them spared a glance for Miss Stark, the Flea Bottom librarian. Sometimes she forgot how old she was until moments like this, and her heart ached at the reminder that there would be no more perfect spring nights of sitting on benches waiting to be kissed by the handsome boy who lived down the road. It made her briefly despise the girls in their pretty dresses and pretty ribbons, and she wrapped her sweater tighter around her body and walked a little faster, her heels clicking on the sidewalk like a typewriter. _Drink in every second,_ she wanted to tell them. _Never be bored. Never wish for the time to pass faster._ That hope for romance had been so much a part of her, and it was unbearable to feel that part of herself fading away as time passed.

She passed the field and let out a sigh of something like relief. A long stretch of yellow brick rowhomes curved around the bend before her, all identical, all with matching neat tiny gardens and storm fences. There were young boys playing in the street outside of her own home, and like the pretty girls on the baseball field, they paid her no mind. She was invisible. She passed by them like a ghost and turned to her own front gate, the latch overcrowded by the lilac bush she had planted when she had first moved in. 

“Hi, Miss Stark,” Shireen called as Sansa unlatched her gate. “Thank you for the book. I _love_ it. It’s so romantic.”

Shireen Baratheon was sitting with the family dog, Patches, on her own porch, reading, trying to squeeze in a few more frantic pages before it was too dark to read outside. The house on Sansa’s right—Jon Snow’s house—was still dark.

“ _Florian and Jonquil_ was always my favorite. I love a good romance,” Sansa confessed, pausing on her porch to face Shireen. She was wearing a lemon-yellow gingham dress with a lace collar—one of the dresses that Sansa had sewn for her. Shireen’s mother was too ill to take care of Shireen, or do much of anything else. In fact, in the years that Sansa had lived here, she had never once met Selyse Baratheon.

“I do, too. Oh, I just remembered! You left your back window open. The kitchen one. Daddy noticed it,” Shireen added, getting to her feet and leaning over the little rail that divided their porches.

In the dusk, it was harder to see how heavily her face was disfigured, and she looked like any other fifteen-year-old girl, coltish and bright and sweet, and Sansa’s heart twinged. Once upon a time she had pictured having a family, having daughters whose dresses she would make…

The door swung open behind her, revealing her father, Mr. Baratheon. He was a severe and taciturn man, and the burden of his ill wife and disfigured daughter weighed on him visibly. He was handsome, in a stern sort of way, with angular, narrow features, and striking dark blue eyes. “Didn’t you notice Miss Stark’s open window, Daddy?” Shireen asked brightly, looking back over her shoulder at her father.

“No, it was Jon Snow,” he corrected her, briefly meeting Sansa’s eyes almost warily. “He noticed this morning, but you’d already left.” Sansa smiled at him, but he didn’t return it. He was such an uncomfortable, awkward man. “There’s a man on the prowl lately, they say. Breaking into homes. You ought to be more careful,” he added, looking away needlessly. _As a woman on her own,_ were the unsaid words.

“You’re right. I heard about that,” Sansa said. Some people speculated it was Ramsay Bolton, one of the local thugs, but it didn’t seem his style to her, though she had never personally met Ramsay Bolton. All she knew of him was what she had glimpsed in the darkness of the basement where the fights took place. He was all slick suiting and blood money tucked secretively and whispers and smoke and the palest, eeriest blue eyes.

“Oh, Snow,” Mr. Baratheon greeted, his voice marginally warmer, at the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk behind her.

She knew Mr. Baratheon liked Jon Snow, ever since he’d helped him fix their sink. Shireen had told her all about it, and insisted that she was _desperately_ in love with Jon Snow and that he was the handsomest man she had ever seen, and the cleverest, and the strongest, too. “What timing. We were just speaking of you.”

Sansa saw a blur of dark out of the corner of her right eye, as she frantically rummaged through her purse for her keys. Her purse suddenly seemed to be a bottomless pit of things that were not her keys, and her fingers were clumsy and useless. “I told Miss Stark you noticed her window was open.”

Sansa risked a glance at Jon Snow as he alighted the step to his own front porch beside hers. Across the railing, their gazes grazed each other like fingertips; they each looked away hastily. They had made a point of avoiding each other’s eyes ever since he’d moved in, of only speaking when it was unavoidable. He had shed his suit jacket in the evening warmth, and had rolled up his shirtsleeves, revealing his strong forearms.

“Right, it’s the kitchen window. The one facing the alley.” He had a soft voice; it always took her aback how soft it was. She found her keys with a burst of relief, and jammed them into the door, overcome with desperation.

“Th-thank you. I’ll be sure to check it. Have a good night,” she stammered to no one in particular, and retreated to the darkness of her home.

The narrow foyer was her darkened refuge, but she was not yet alone: through the thin wall, she heard Jon Snow’s front door open, then close with a metallic smack, and heard the clatter of his keys on a surface next to the wall. She listened for his familiar footfalls, light and fast, as he ran up the steps that ran parallel to hers, separated by only that thin wall.

As promised, the kitchen window that faced the alleyway running behind the rowhomes was open, the lace curtains fluttering with the breeze. She shut it, and looked at the clock.

Seven forty-five.

She had a whole three hours to wait.

She’d gone grocery shopping, as she had nothing better to do on a Friday evening, so she unloaded her bags. As she was stowing the chicken in the refrigerator, she heard the radio start up next door. Doris Day’s voice falsed through the thin walls, slightly muffled and warped:

_I walked down the street like a good girl should_

_He followed me down the street like I knew he would_

Jon Snow often blared his radio at odd hours, the music always random and always seemingly ill matched to him. She never complained, because somehow she knew that he needed the noise.

It had become comforting to her, too. She’d wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, and through the wall she’d hear the radio, the sound distant and warbled as though underwater. Sometimes he played music, sometimes the news, and sometimes, just static. She knew it was only noise to him, unless it was baseball—then she’d hear him pacing, back and forth, occasionally hissing an oath of frustration. She pictured him with his hand over his mouth, pacing, scowling down at the floor, and then silently punching the air for home runs.

_Because a guy is a guy wherever he may be_

_So listen and I’ll tell you what this fella did to me_

She wondered if he needed the noise now in preparation for tonight. She looked at the clock again, even though she knew only a moment had passed; it was reflexive. _Just a few more hours_ , she told herself, and she busied herself with cleaning the kitchen pointlessly. Just a few more hours, and then she would watch Jon Snow fight.

_I walked to my house like a good girl should_

_He followed me to my house like I knew he would_

She’d started going to the fights two years ago, back before Jeyne had gotten married. She hadn’t wanted to go. She didn’t like violence, and she thought that going to a fight sounded vulgar and scary. But somehow Jeyne had convinced her—it had been a night so much like this night, a night where it seemed like a profound waste of all the beauty of the universe to not have plans—and she had followed her friend to that grim basement of a warehouse after they’d each had a shot of scotch, giddy and flushed and dressed in their Sunday best. She had worn a blue dress with a matching hat and matching gloves, that dress’s first outing. She had made it herself. It was gauzy and light, and the top layer tied up the back in delicate bows.

The crush of bodies had been overwhelming; it had been airless, sweltering, and hard to see anything. There were only a few lights over the ring, leaving the fighters skeletal and golden in the dim light, and everything else in muddled, depraved darkness. The shouts and laughter and cheers and jeers had bounced off the walls, and Jeyne had taken her hand, both of them emboldened by the scotch and the heat and the impropriety of it all, and they had pushed their way closer to the ring. 

She had recognized him at once. Jon Snow was there, shirtless and facing another man, dark hair wild and mussed, hard chest and lean arms gleaming with sweat, and she had thought she might be sick.

He was her cousin, and had lived with her family for a few years when they had all been young. Then some family member or another had come out of the woodwork to take him away, and she’d not seen him again. She’d never forgotten him, the sweet but silent boy with the sad eyes and gentle voice. They had never been close, partly because her mother had hated Jon, and Sansa had been above all loyal to her mother.

Years later, during the war, Robb had written to her to tell her he had reunited with Jon Snow. They were, by chance, in the same company, and they had grown close as brothers at once. …And then Robb had not come back from the war, but Jon had. At Robb’s funeral, the casket empty, Mother had confronted Jon outside of the church. _It should have been you,_ Catelyn had choked, cheeks wet with tears. Jon had not fought her on it; he had simply turned away and left.

She had not thought about Jon Snow again until that moment when she had seen him in the ring. She would later learn that he was renting the house next to her, and a week after that he moved in. He had been as uncomfortable as her to learn they were neighbors; she knew it had been entirely coincidental, and likely due to the fact that he had acquired the house the same way she had: through Rodrik Cassel, an old friend of her father’s, and the owner of the section of rowhomes.

_I never saw the boy before_

_So nothin’ could be sillier_

She had watched Jon that first night as he fought another man with such ferocity that she had felt certain that one of them might die. The shouts and jeers had become a dull roar of noise as she watched, her hands over her mouth in horror. She had heard the meaty, crunching sounds of fighting, watched blood spray from his nose and mouth in long spines of black on the cement floor; watched his chest grow slick and gleaming with sweat and smeared blood. It didn’t seem to matter how hard he was hit—he’d always hit back, harder.

He had won that fight, blood streaming down his chin and onto his chest, and had dropped to the ground the moment after he had been pronounced the winner. She had left, shaking and sick, and had gone straight home and hidden beneath her covers, and in the darkness, her hand had dipped down between her legs almost against her will, and she had blindly brought herself to the brink and then, thinking of that rush of adrenaline, his slick skin and fierce eyes, had toppled over the edge. Afterwards she had been horrified and disgusted with herself. To touch herself alone was a foul and shameful act, but to be prompted to do it at the sight of such violence…what was wrong with her?

_At close range his face was strange_

_But his manner was familiar_

But they both had returned the next month, and the one after that. Jeyne got married and stopped going, but Sansa never stopped. Every time, she wore a scarf over her hair—she didn’t want to be recognized—and the same blue dress, and she watched him fight. Their eyes would always meet, so briefly, before the fight began; it was almost a superstition for her at this point, that she must catch those dark grey eyes. That was all the contact they ever had, all the acknowledgement of each other’s existence.

He didn’t always win, but he had more wins than any other man that fought, and he never took the winner’s money that had been pooled from the attendees. He never looked like he _should_ win: he was so slender and lean, where every other man who fought was burly and bulky and thickly muscled. But he was fast, so much faster than any of them, and there was far more strength in his slender sinew than anyone could ever guess.

And each time she would lose herself in the clamor, the vitality, the singular state of wondering whether he would win this one or not, and she would watch him lose himself in it, too; the universe contracted to that poorly-lit ring where there was nothing to think of but the fight in front of him. And each time, she would return to her home alone, and touch herself, her fantasies only ever darkening and twisting. Her shame was a burden she had forgotten to carry a long time ago; it had simply grown too heavy to be bothered with, and besides, no one knew she carried it. You could only maintain shame of the things that other people knew about. No one knew that she dreamt of violence and yearned for a fight of her own. She was sweet, delicate, near-invisible Sansa Stark, the gentle and soft-spoken librarian, as delicate and filmy and decorative and useless as lace curtains.

_He asked me for a good night kiss_

_I said, it’s still good day_  

She envied Jon fiercely. At least he had someplace for his anger to go. 

_I would have told him more except_

_His lips got—_

The radio abruptly cut off. She paused, kneeling on the floor, mid-scrub, listening to him pace away from the radio, then heard the telltale signs of cooking: a sink running, pots and pans clanging. She drew in a breath and went back to scrubbing. _Just a few more hours._ Heat bloomed between her legs and the kitchen, quite suddenly, felt far too warm. She had a flash of those strong hands, wrapped in blood-stained tape, gripping her wrists, holding her down.

_Just a few more hours._

She bit her lip, and scrubbed harder.

* * *

Jon was shaken. He tried to time his comings and goings so that they did not run into one another, but he’d had an emergency at work—a shipment of clay had been lost—that had delayed him.

Of course it had to be _tonight_ before the fight that he ran into her. Seeing Sansa always threw him off. He’d watched her fumble for her keys, frantic and desperate to get away from him—for it truly was _him_ she wanted to get away from. She was close to the Baratheons, and was nearly a surrogate mother to little Shireen Baratheon. As he had approached the porch he had watched Sansa light up at the sight of Shireen, happily chatting with her, the evening breeze toying with her remarkable copper hair, the hem of her green dress fluttering around the swell of her lovely calves. As soon as she had seen him she had withdrawn like a flower at the threat of nighttime. It was him she did not like. _It should have been you._ Catelyn Stark’s words reverberated to his core, as they so often did whenever he was confronted with Sansa Stark.

He made himself dinner, thinking about tonight’s fight. He thought it might be Bolton tonight. He’d never fought the man before. Bolton was the local thug, but he was usually busy with betting on the fights, not participating in them. But he’d been eyeing Jon of late, and Jon somehow sensed that he’d fight him soon. He was experienced enough to be afraid of Bolton, even though he didn’t think Bolton possessed any fighting abilities whatsoever. The man had a reputation for chaotic violence, and he was more afraid of a man who had never fought before than a man who had.

But that wouldn’t stop him. He would not back down from any fight—in fact, the bloodier, the better.

He did his dishes and cleaned, to while away the time. The house darkened, and soon he could hear the crickets. He’d left the back door open to let in the late spring air, so fragrant and sweet, and it let in the night noises too. He thought of the rumors of a man prowling the neighborhood, breaking in in the night, and thought of Sansa’s open window.

He thought of her, standing there in the crowd in her blue dress, the way she always was at every fight. He wished she wouldn't cover her hair but he would never tell her that. Meeting her eyes, the same blue as her dress, would have to be enough. It was the only time they ever really looked at each other, that one dire, pregnant instant before the fists flew. He felt naked when she looked at him. He felt _alive._ It was so shameful, but it made his blood sing. And after every fight, he would lay awake in the darkness, thinking of her and aching, throbbing, with an inexplicable need, but he never allowed his hands to wander. It had been years since he had last slept with anyone, but he would not find release to thoughts of Sansa Stark. He did not deserve to.

At last, the clock struck eleven, and it was time to start preparing.

He changed into a fresh undershirt. He combed his hair with a wet comb, carefully taming the messy curls. He put more care into himself before a fight than he ever did for work. This was his ritual. And then he left his house.

Sansa had not left yet; he could still see a light on in her living room. He always worried about her walking so late but he knew Mr. Baratheon paid attention—perhaps too much attention. But Jon would not fault him for coveting Sansa. She was kind to Shireen and gentle and lovely, and Stannis Baratheon was lonely and starved for love and understanding, and he carried the entire household on his own. Jon thought it must be agonizing, to have this lovely solution to all of his problems held up before him, close enough that he could hear her bathing at night yet just out of his reach. No, he would forgive Stannis Baratheon for his secret yearnings. Jon had plenty of those of his own.

But now he would put her out of his head. Now it was time, at last, to fight. In the navy evening he approached the large stone warehouse. The decorative tilework on the building had been supplied by Mormont Ceramic and Terra Cotta, the company which Jon had worked for since the end of the war; Jon recognized the designs, as they were signature of the Mormont company.

There was already a group of people waiting outside the door that led into the basement. It was of an old factory that had been converted into a warehouse, the basement reserved for these monthly fights. Jon bypassed them, hearing them cheer at the sight of him and call out his name. He did not look at them. He was not here to be cheered for. If anything he would have preferred to fight alone, in the dark, with no one watching.

 He descended into the basement, which smelled like smoke, salt, sweat, perfume, and blood. It was still dark, and only Theon Greyjoy was there, blurred by a haze of smoke, counting his money. Seaworth would join later. Jon preferred the older man over Greyjoy, but it didn’t matter.

“Need help wrapping?” he asked, cigarette perched on his curved lip, as Jon passed him and began shedding his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt.

“No.” He had the tape for his fists and his mouthguard in his pocket. “Who’s on for tonight?” He faced the corner as he unbuttoned his shirt and folded it. He didn’t know why he bothered to wear a crisply starched shirt. He just took it off right away anyway, and by the time the night was over, the shirt was always ruined and wilted from the humidity and the smoke. 

“…Bolton. A rookie,” Greyjoy said with heavy irony. Jon paused before resuming pulling his undershirt over his head and kicking off his shoes and socks. He heard the door open again with a bang like gunfire, and then the click of heels on the cement floor.

“If it isn’t the Flea Bottom champion of fists: Jon Snow!” came an unsteady, musical voice, bouncing off the walls and ceiling. Jon didn’t turn around right away. “Come on, turn around so I can see your handsome face.” 

Jon still didn’t turn around.

“You go in that corner and wrap up,” Greyjoy directed Bolton quietly, the joke gone from his voice.

“Not so fast. I want to see my handsome man.” Jon heard the heels click closer, felt Bolton behind him, standing so close Jon could smell the talc on him. “I’m challenging you tonight, Jon Snow. Don’t you want to see the man you’re going to fight?”

Jon began wrapping his left hand. He had done it so many times that he didn’t even need to look anymore. He could just go on feel alone.

“I’ll see you plenty soon enough,” he replied coolly, tugging on the tape, testing its tension. “When we fight.” 

“Oh, he’s a bit fresh, isn’t he?” Bolton mused, and he let out an eerie, high, cold laugh, his breath rushing along the back of Jon’s neck, ruffling the hair there. “Very well. I suppose you can’t help if you’re shy.”

He didn’t take the bait. Jon listened to Bolton walk over to the other corner slowly, theatrically. In spite of his cool demeanor, however, he was unnerved. Bolton had a reputation, and even if he won this fight, there was nothing to stop Bolton from coming after him afterwards—with men, with knives, even with guns. Things like morals and laws did not seem to concern Bolton, at least not according to the rumors.

It would be wise to lose this one on purpose, he thought. Maybe he’d give it a decent shot and then pull out at the last minute, to keep it convincing. He didn’t want trouble; he just wanted to fight.

But there was some part of him—the part that lay awake for nights on end, reliving the war not in regret but in bitter, shameful, secret longing—that wanted trouble, wanted it bad. _You don’t want the Bolton kind of trouble,_ he told himself, wrapping his right fist. He was right-handed, but he’d been taught to lead with his left, and it was a strategy that seemed to save him every time. He had Jaime Lannister to thank for that—another man lost to the war.

“Heard you live near that _creature_ , Snow,” Bolton remarked, voice heavy with insinuation. Jon glanced to his right, and saw Ramsay’s back, brutally scarred, to him. Jon thought of Sansa, then, and his fingers went cold. “That little gargoyle of Stannis Baratheon.”

Not Sansa. Shireen. Sweet, clever, shy little Shireen. “From behind she almost looks like a pretty little thing, like a fuckable thing,” Ramsay continued now, wrapping his own fists. “I drove up behind her the other day, all ready to whistle at her, but then she turned and I thought my dick might rot off.”

He wanted trouble. He wanted trouble bad.

Shireen was a little girl. Not even sixteen. “I hear you’re at the Baratheon house _all the time._ Fixing things. Poor Stannis isn’t man enough to do it himself, I reckon. Ever had a taste of the little gargoyle? I wonder if her cunt is—“

“—Is this nervous chatter, Bolton?” Jon finally turned away from the corner to look at Ramsay. The man was stronger, leaner, than he had expected, and his torso was covered in horrific scars and welts and burns. _He’s been through the war, too._ The man’s face was untouched, the skin smooth and unblemished, the lips so full and pouty that they made Jon slightly sick to look at them, and then those watery blue eyes that looked like a mistake. He was smiling at Jon.

“I suppose it is, Snow.” He clapped his hands together—his fists were expertly wrapped. _Not a rookie… not at all._ “Oh, but you do make me nervous. I’m as fearful as a blushing bride on her wedding night, about to have my innocence taken by a big, bad man.”

“Your innocence is safe,” Jon replied. To his surprise, Ramsay threw his head back and cackled almost gleefully. It made him even sicker to hear it, but the noise was lost as Theon began to let the audience in.

A circle had been drawn on the floor beneath the only lamp in white chalk, and by the end of the night it would be smeared by their bare feet, turned pink in places as their blood was ground into the chalk, the line blurred and misshapen. The audience was giddy: girls in their best Sunday dresses and bright lipstick, brighter than blood, and men in polished shoes and pressed shirts. The air was thick with the sweet scents of talc and lily of the valley, turned sour by the odors of blood and sweat that could not be erased from this basement.

Jon watched them file in as he put in his mouthguard, cringing at the sour taste, waiting a moment for his throat to stop working with the urge to gag. His heart was throbbing high in his chest, making his clavicles shake, and his vision seemed to darken round the edges, as it always did just before a fight.

He looked for her, and at last he saw Sansa enter. She wasn’t wearing a scarf over her hair this time, and it was bright as a flame even in the dim lighting, bright flame against her bluebell dress, and it made his mouth water, made him clench his teeth around his mouthguard.

Even across the congested room their eyes locked, as always, and he felt soothed. He indulgently let his gaze linger a moment longer, relishing the copper of her hair and how it looked against the blue of her dress. He saw those lovely eyes dip downward to his bare skin and it was like she had trailed her slender fingers down his chest. He touched his mouthguard through his cheek once more, adjusting it against his back teeth, and looked away. 

* * *

 

The crush of bodies was repulsive and thrilling. She liked to be near the ring but not at its edge, but tonight she was helplessly pushed to the front by the sheer force of so many people. She felt drunk, as drunk as if she’d downed a glass of scotch, and her face was too warm. Jon had not simply met her gaze—he had _looked_ at her, he had _stared_. She reached up to touch a hand to her overheated cheek when she realized that her hair had been left out—she had forgotten to wear the scarf over it.

Well, it didn’t matter. Jon was the only one who ever noticed her or recognized her here. 

And then, suddenly, Jon and his opponent were being guided into the ring, and the roar was deafening. A man wolf-whistled just in her ear and she flinched in pain, massaging her ear, as she was jostled by the people around her. She drank in the sight of so much of Jon’s skin bare to her, watched it become flushed as he faced his opponent. The name Ramsay Bolton rose from the crowd like fog and chilled her. She had seen him before, always in slickly tailored suits, his bright blue gaze flittering about with a childlike air of enjoyment that was turned horrible, terrible, by even the barest rumors of his cruelty.

Ramsay Bolton’s back was to her, scarred and mottled and burned, and the sight of it twisted her stomach. A slender man with sly eyes stood in between them, counting off, his lips which were usually curved in a sly grin not curved on this night, no cigarette perched between them, and suddenly the excitement turned grim. Even _he_ , the man she thought of as Smiler, wasn’t smiling. 

And then it began. The roar was deafening. Jon Snow was a crowd favorite but throwing Ramsay Bolton in the ring brought out the crowd’s more savage nature: men twice Jon Snow’s size could not defeat him, but what of Ramsay? Perhaps the cruel Bolton boy would bring Jon Snow’s crown toppling down at last. No one knew what they wanted, who they wanted to win.

Ramsay was fast, nearly as fast as Jon. They ducked around each other for a long time, bobbing and weaving and feinting, Jon testing the waters and Ramsay seemingly just coyly playing with him, mirroring his every move with a giddy exhilaration, laughing at odd moments. But in the dull roar his boyish laughter became warbled and sinister.

Jon threw the first punch and it landed squarely on Ramsay’s chin in a sickening, meaty _thump_ that knocked Ramsay backward, spit and blood flying in a darkened spray and slashing the floor before Sansa’s feet. Ramsay stumbled backward drunkenly but then leapt forward with the wild clean grace of a coyote, and lunged for Jon with a sudden, terrible growl. 

Form was lost as their fists flew.

The fight was wild, savage: snarling and teeth and nails and skin and blood, moving too fast for Sansa to even parse who was winning.

It was a bloodbath.

For one moment Jon broke free, his chin and neck shining with blood—it was smeared up his jaw, into his hair—but then he was lost again to the tangle of sweaty limbs. It was artless, godless. It was foul.

She did not want this. This was no salvation.

 _Bol-TON Bol-TON Bol-TON_ and _SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW_ rushed in her ears, the crowd stamping their feet in time with their chants, as the fighting grew ever more dizzying and brutal. They were so smeared with blood and sweat, bare feet sliding in it on the concrete, and then, out of nowhere, the chanting stopped, as Jon and Ramsay’s movements grew ragged and desperate in a new and sickening way.

No one made a sound: they were consumed with the butcher’s sound of punches upon flesh and bone, the wet spray of blood and sweat and saliva; the desperate, unbridled gasps.

They were going to kill each other. 

 _Just tap out,_ she pleaded, bile rising in her throat, her hands and feet and face going numb with horror as she watched Jon stumble backwards, smacking dazedly into the crowd behind him; they rebuked him and he was thrown forward, and in a sheer burst of luck, Ramsay lunged forward too at just the right moment, and they fell to the ground together in a wet _smack_.

No one knew what to do. The fight had never gone so far before.

They wrestled and writhed furiously, desperately, but Ramsay threw himself on top of Jon, pinning him down, and his hands, shaking and blackened and slick with blood, went to Jon’s neck, tightening around the musculature, as Ramsay heaved onto Jon more, dripping blood and saliva and sweat from his mouth and nose and hair onto Jon, who was gasping and clawing at Ramsay’s hands, and it was against the rules—everyone knew it without needing to be told—but no one had the courage to step in and stop Ramsay from choking Jon to death. No one else was breathing, either.

She did not even plan on speaking; the words came from her very soul in the most animal of voices. “ _STOP._ ”

Ramsay, gasping and heaving, looked back over his shoulder, pale blue eyes peering at her through blood as dark as ink, fixing on her as she clapped a hand to her mouth to stop from vomiting at the horror of it, unable to look away from Ramsay’s gaze.

“D-disqualified,” stammered the Smiler, so weakly, stepping in at last. “Foul play, Bolton.”

He and another, older man had to drag Ramsay out of the ring, prying his hands from Jon’s neck. Jon gasped and choked, and turned onto his stomach, coughing and shaking, holding himself up on his elbows. Her head felt strangely cold, and stars winked before her as Jon Snow nearly dissolved into black, but luckily, a man next to her grabbed her before she could fall backwards and faint, shaking her out of it.

The older man helped Jon to his feet. A low murmur was rising like heat as the shock and horror began to slowly ebb. Ramsay Bolton had been dragged to another chair where one of his lackeys was wiping the blood from his face, and Jon was being propped up by the smiling man—she thought his name might be Greyjoy but she had never paid him any attention—and helped over to another chair. She watched him cough out his mouthguard, then spit blood out onto the cement. _Pulp,_ she thought numbly, staring at Jon. _He’s been beaten to a pulp._

She couldn’t stay. She had to get out. She needed air. She could not bear the stench of blood any longer. She turned, hand pressed firmly over her mouth, but the one thing she saw as she turned was Ramsay’s bright blue eyes fixed on her.

She had to get out. She had to get out. She was pushing frantically, desperately, with her free hand, her throat burning with bile. 

At last, at last she escaped into the cool night, and leaned against the cool stone, bent over, clutching her belly, dry heaving, but the bile had settled again. She was left a cold, shaking mess, and even in her blue dress she slid down to the ground, tears running down her cheeks freely as she hugged her knees to her chest.

What would have happened had she not screamed out?

And what might happen now, now that she had?

She registered that people were leaving the basement, gossiping in hushed voices. After most of the crowd had left, and it was only stragglers left, she forced herself back to her feet, and stumbled home in the darkness. 

She didn’t even realize she was still crying until she got to her front door. A light was on in the Baratheon home, and she saw a dark silhouette at the window, ever so briefly, before the warm golden lamp was put out, and the window went dark. She realized then that her stockings had a hole in the knee—when had she fallen?—and that her face was wet with tears, her hair sticking to her cheeks wetly.

It took a few tries to unlock her door, and she thought briefly of the open kitchen window but put it aside. In the dark kitchen, she went to the cabinet under her sink, and took out an untouched bottle of scotch. She didn’t know why she had it, precisely, but she was grateful for it now as she took a long swig straight from the bottle, the sort of thing a lady like her would never do. With her throat raw and her stomach burning, she recapped it and stowed it away again, and braced her hands against the edge of the kitchen counter and stared out the window into the dark alleyway. 

The night was silent save for the chirp of crickets. She did not know how long she stood there, braced against the counter and staring into the darkness, but she was jolted from her numb reverie by the sound of a door opening and slamming. Jon Snow was home. She heard the familiar crash of keys, distantly, and then the _thump thump thump_ of him climbing up his stairs, far slower than usual. She could not even believe he could walk. 

Suddenly, she was drained, unbearably drained. She kicked off her heels and stumbled in her ruined stockings up her own steps, pulling herself up by the bannister. 

In her bedroom, she did not even bother with her nightly ritual of removing her makeup and slathering on her face creams. She wriggled out of her dress and stockings, leaving them in a heap on her vanity chair, and undid her girdle with clumsy fingers. At last, undressed, she dropped into her bed naked, her head swimming. 

* * *

 

He didn’t really feel the pain until he got home. Sansa’s house was dark, and he’d considered knocking, but then he’d seen a flash of light from Stannis’ house. The older man had leaned out of his front door, a smudge of darkness in the night.

“Is she home?” Jon asked across the railings.

“Yes, she got home a few minutes ago,” Stannis replied, and then went back inside. Jon was grateful that he was shadowed from the light of the moon; if Stannis had seen his condition it would have led to some uncomfortable questions. 

One of his teeth had felt loose and he’d been absently tonguing it as he wandered, dazedly, home, but it seemed that the minute that he stepped through the door his mouth blossomed with blinding pain—as did everything else.

Every part of him suddenly was in agony. He took a long drink of the whiskey he normally did not touch, perhaps longer than was necessary, and then went upstairs to wash off the blood and grime. In the grim light of his bathroom, he avoided his reflection. He was not ready to see what had been done to him just yet. He peeled off his clothes—his shirt was now drenched with blood and therefore truly ruined—as he waited for the tub to fill up. Every movement set him on fire anew. His skin was so raw and chapped, every part of him throbbing and aching with pain. There was a gash on his forehead, and it kept blooming anew with blood that trickled into his eye. 

He dropped into the lukewarm water, and even that was searing agony. The water turned pink at once, sloshing around him and darkening to cloudy rust. He splashed his face with shaking hands. He’d protected his face well, at the expense of the rest of him, until the end…but that back tooth was dangerously loose, and his lip was split, and he was sure both his eyes had been blackened. His jaw and nose and lip and eyes pulsed with pain as he washed his face. He had to empty and re-fill the tub twice more before the water stopped turning rusty red.

A long time later he finally got out of the water, dripping pink onto the tiled floor. He’d clean it later. He was fastidiously clean, normally, but tonight he was spent. At last he braved the mirror.

His lip had a bright red line down the middle, but it wasn’t as bad as it felt; blue and grey darkened the skin around his left eye already, but his right side only looked red—for now.

It would be, at last, a dead giveaway of his only hobby, which he had worked so meticulously to hide from his boss at Mormont Ceramic and Terra Cotta. Men who brawled in basements did not become superintendent, but unfortunately, these were the only two things that Jon had to do with his time.

He had been keeping them nicely parallel, separated, but it seemed that his only means of coping with the bottomless, rancid, vile rage that he was filled with was finally butting heads with his only means of staying tied to normal human life. Mormont would see the split lip, the black eye, and while he might not ask, he’d take note of it. He’d already mentioned Jon’s lack of a family, and apparent lack of any life at all, on a number of occasions.

He changed into pajama pants and a short-sleeved undershirt, leaving his ruined clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor. He would deal with them later, he promised himself. There was likely nothing to do for them but simply dispose of them.

He kept a bottle of Triagesic in his nightstand but his supply was low, as he’d been going to fights more and more, lately. He took a few, rather less disciplined than he normally was, and fell into his bed, aching and sick. Every time he closed his eyes he felt Ramsay on him, heavy and slick as a slug, and heard that horrific shriek: _STOP!_

And saw, with a nameless dread, Ramsay’s head turn so slowly to search for the owner of the voice…saw Ramsay’s gaze land on Sansa, her red hair, so unforgettable, gleaming like flames. Why hadn’t she covered her hair? Ramsay Bolton would never forget her, would never forget that she had stopped him from having his fun. Jon was filled with shame that he had so reveled in the sight of her hair tonight, because it might cost her, later.

He couldn’t sleep, he realized. There was every chance that Ramsay would pay Sansa a visit tonight, and it would be Jon’s fault. And so, in spite of his exhaustion, he creaked out of bed, and gingerly went downstairs again, intending on sitting in his living room in the darkness until the sun rose, listening for Ramsay. 

But then he heard glass shatter somewhere outside, and all rational thought—and all thoughts of pain—left him.

* * *

Glass shattered somewhere; she saw Ramsay Bolton’s washed-out blue eyes. Sansa jerked upright, keeping perfectly still, but her heart was pounding too loud. Dizzy in the darkness she rose from bed and grappled around for her dressing gown, wrapping it around her naked body as she held her breath, waiting…perhaps she had imagined it, she thought pleadingly, her body beginning to relax; perhaps it had been part of her dreaming, and nothing more. 

Footsteps. 

The creak of a door.

Her mouth went dry.

Her first thought was to scream for help but she couldn’t seem to unstick her throat. It was like a terrible nightmare; maybe it _was_ a nightmare and that was her only hope. Years ago she might have simply locked her bedroom door and cowered helplessly, but there was no one to help her anymore, and she’d spent too much time on her own to sit there waiting for a rescuer anymore. Jon might have heard her scream …but what if he didn’t? She couldn’t bank on Jon or Mr. Baratheon coming to her rescue; after all, no one had ever come to her rescue before.

With shaking hands she unplugged the chinoiserie lamp that sat on her nightstand and held it like a baseball bat as she crept out of her room, holding her breath, waiting for the next sign of the intruder. On her landing, the floor creaked under her feet and she froze, heard heavy breathing, felt her eyes prick with tears of horror, and swallowed against a gasp of fear.

It all happened at once: there was a dark blur of a man’s shape; she swung her lamp at the man but missed and hit the wall, shattering the ceramic; her front door opened with a bang; the dark blur tumbled down the steps, and a shadow by the front door lunged for the man, but was thrown aside roughly, smacking into the wall with a grunt of pain, as the blur escaped out the front door, slamming it shut behind him.

And then silence again.

“S-sansa?”

She looked down at the shattered remains of her lamp, her beloved lamp that had been her mother’s, and closed her eyes, briefly. The voice was so soft, like a healing balm. _Jon Snow._

“I-I’m alright,” she said, fumbling in the darkness for the hall light. She switched it on, revealing the shattered pieces of ceramic, and then, at the foot of the steps by the open front door, was Jon Snow, as breathless as she was, his dark eyes taking in her bathrobe and the shattered lamp at her feet.

He looked like hell. A black eye was forming already, and another would be soon to follow, she was certain of it, and his lip was split. His movements were different, too: less fluid than usual and constricted by pain. He was clad in a tight undershirt and was turned silver by the moonlight coming in from the front door. Cast in the silvery light she could almost imagine he was shirtless again, and that shameful heat bloomed along her body again. Shame could only flourish under the light of attention, of knowledge, and right now she thought he _must_ know, _had_ to know, just how dark her thoughts truly ran. She thought it must be written on her face, surrounding her like a storm cloud: all of her dark wants and strange wishes.

“I didn’t see the face,” he finally said, pushing at his hair. He pulled his hand away from his face and she saw darkness on his fingertips.

“Oh, no, did he hurt you?”

She padded down the steps, tightening her robe’s belt carefully. In the dim light she could see that the force of being thrown against the wall had reopened a gash on his forehead near his hairline.

“No, that was from the fight,” Jon replied, looking down at his dark, shining fingertips.

“Here,” she said, and, desperate for some semblance of normalcy, she went into the kitchen and turned on the light. “Let me help you clean it.”

“You don’t have to.” 

He stood awkwardly in the doorway to her kitchen, the light casting his wounds in high relief. She was all too aware of how thin her robe was, of how strange this situation was; they had been so careful not to speak for years now, and now he was in her kitchen at three in the morning, bleeding, and she may as well have been naked. She busied herself with searching for her gauze and ointment beneath the sink, glad for the excuse to look away. “I heard glass breaking,” he remarked. “Let me find where he came in." 

“Oh, right,” she muttered vaguely. She heard him walk away on bare feet—he must have run from his home then, must have been woken up and run over at the sound. He came back into the kitchen after a moment.

“I should’ve known,” he said. “It’s the same window that was open. He must have been planning this.”

She looked up. She’d not even realized but the kitchen window was the one that had been smashed. “I’ll tape this up for now. Tomorrow we can see about getting new glass,” he was saying, and she heard him looking through her cabinets for tape.

“I don’t have the right kind,” she protested, straightening, holding the ointment and gauze at last. Jon closed the cabinet, still avoiding her eyes.

“I’ll be right back—I’ve got it,” he said, disappearing again. She could hear him in his own house, then heard her door opening again. He came back with electrical tape and an old brown paper bag, and set to work taping over the window as though there was nothing at all strange about this, as though he was in her kitchen all the time, as though she was not practically naked, as though she had not watched him fight to nearly the death hours earlier. “There.”

One lovely, angular hand smoothed the tape over the sill. The brown paper bucked and rippled at the night breeze, and they stared at it together for a moment, each at a loss for what to do.

“Let me get your cuts,” Sansa finally said, and she pulled out one of the little wooden chairs at her kitchen table. Jon reluctantly sat down, facing away from her, not looking at her. She hesitated, fingers fluttering nervously, before biting her lip and stepping closer, and placing her hand over his hair, pushing it to the side, the better to access the gash.

It was partly a scrape—it must have been from when Ramsay had pushed him down onto the floor. She touched at the gash tentatively, heard him draw in a sharp breath. “Sorry,” she whispered. His skin was warm beneath her fingertips, his hair soft, slightly damp. He had bathed, of course. He would have had to. But somehow the knowledge made her face grow warm.

“You shouldn’t have interfered,” he said, at last, as she dabbed the wet gauze around the edge of the wound so gingerly. His shoulder brushed against her hip. She wished she could open a window. “Bolton won’t forget that you did.”

“He was going to kill you.”

“All the same,” Jon insisted. “You ought to be more careful.”

“Mr. Baratheon said the same thing earlier tonight,” Sansa recalled. The wound was cleaner, now. She took the ointment, pausing. She would put it on him and then they would have no further reason to interact. He would go back to his home, and she would be alone once more. “As I’m a woman on my own.”

“It’s not just that,” Jon said grimly. 

“Then what is it?”

He didn’t answer her; merely looked down at his hands as she smoothed the ointment over the wound, feeling him wince slightly. “What is it?” she pressed, fingertips lingering on the wound.

“If you didn’t…look the way you do…you’d get less attention. But your hair is memorable, your face is memorable.”

Gooseflesh raised along her skin.

“Are you saying I’m pretty?” She tried to sound light, to sound teasing, but her mouth had gone dry.

“Not pretty,” he said reluctantly. “More than that. Men will notice and remember. Especially a man like Bolton.”

“Y-you really think he’ll come after me?” She did not acknowledge his implication that she was beautiful.

“Yes, I do.” She heard him swallow, felt him look down at his hands, his skin sliding beneath her fingertips. “I-I don’t feel right leaving you alone tonight. If it’s alright, I’ll wait in the living room, just until morning.”

She pulled her fingertips away from him, wiping the greasy ointment from them on her bathrobe absently. It was unlike her to be messy but he had sent her reeling with his words. She turned away. “O-or,” he began uncomfortably, behind her, “I can just sit on the porch, or something, if that would make you more comf—“

“It’s really only helpful if you’re in my room.” Her words rang out through the kitchen. She saw nothing of the kitchen before her. Her heart was shuddering beneath her breastbone, her fingers and knees trembling. Something had overtaken her. Some unwieldy desperation that was stronger than her shame. She did not turn around. “I-if Ramsay Bolton really wants me, he can easily get into my room from the alley, I mean.” She turned to the kitchen door, and did not look back at him as she walked. “S-so you really ought to be in my room, if you want to help me.”

She walked, rapidly, to the steps, her blood pounding so loudly that she could not hear anything else. She climbed the steps and almost cut her feet on the shattered lamp, and then went into her room, leaving the door open, and stared at her bed, at her discarded dress and stockings and girdle.

Footsteps. Slow, tentative, careful…she heard him dodge the shattered lamp, heard his bare feet upon the hardwood of her bedroom floor. He was standing behind her. He had come, but had he understood her meaning?

She turned around, slowly. His lovely grey eyes were drinking in the sight of her now, openly, without shame, lingering on the way the fabric twisted over her breasts and hips. She was damp between her legs, watching his shirt tighten over his chest with each breath. Even the cut on his lip was beautiful to her.

“Do you want…me…here?” That soft voice. A soft voice and hard fists. She was drowning in heat as she drank in his grey eyes.

“Yes.”

His brows knit together in confusion, in something like fear, as he studied her.

“I thought you hated me for coming back without Robb.”

It was too late, now; she had already let go of her shame.

“No. I wanted you.”

She saw the moment everything shifted: his grey eyes looked almost black, and the loveliest flush, just barely perceptible in the darkness, rushed over his skin as he stared at her, then stepped forward just as she did.

He was kissing her, his lips rough from the split, his hands rough on her upper arms, too; but even that was too much sweetness. She wanted something harder, something stronger. _I want scotch and boxing and broken glass,_ she thought, a flutter beneath her breastbone as his chest brushed against hers, so little fabric separating his hard chest from her breasts.

They broke apart, gasping in the silent darkness. His eyes looked almost black, and she could just barely make out the shadow of the bruises in the dark. 

“Is this—“ he began, but she cut him off with another fierce, searing kiss, her breasts brushing his chest, and he made a noise that was almost animal into her mouth, hands on her hips, gripping, fingers digging into the soft flesh, and there was wet heat dripping down her inner thigh.

“The bed,” she gasped against his lips, pulling him by the front of his shirt, and he stumbled with her back to her bed. The back of her knees hit her mattress and they fell into the mattress together, gasping, attempting to wriggle together further onto the bed. He was kissing her but it wasn’t enough; it was still too much sweetness, too much gentleness. She grabbed at his shirt and he rose up just enough to slide it over his head, revealing his hard, bruised torso to her, and tossed it aside. His hands lingered at the tie of her bathrobe, a question in his eyes, and she guided his hands to untie it, never breaking the gaze. The rush of cool air, combined with the heat in his gaze, made her nipples harden, as his eyes traced downward, drinking in the sight of her breasts.

He leaned forward, kissing her again so sweetly, and she could not bear it. She ran her fingers through his hair as he settled between her legs. She could feel the heat and hardness of his length pressing into her cunt, only the hem of her robe separating him from her bare, wet lips. She dug her heels into his arse and he rolled his hips reflexively in response, and she whimpered into his mouth. He laced his fingers with hers and hovered over her, and she felt the trail of hair at his abdomen ticking her belly.

“Are you sure?” he breathed. She nodded, breathing heavily, feeling her nipples brush against his skin with the movement, sending little shoots of desire down to her core.

“I-I want it rough,” she whispered. Jon paused.

“Rough?”

“Hard. Fast. I-I want you to hold me down,” she confessed in a rush, “and—and _take_ me.”

She was too filled with desire to be ashamed of her dark fantasy, her deepest secret. Jon’s brows knit together. 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he protested. His gaze was so warm, so gentle.

“You won’t,” she said hastily. “If you don’t want me—“

“—I want you,” he interrupted hoarsely. “But—“

“—You won’t hurt me. I’ll tell you if you do.”

“Why do you want this?” he asked her, eyes roving over her face.

“You want to fight,” she pointed out, before biting her lip. “It’s what feels good,” she confessed. “I’m only asking because I know you’re good and kind. I know you don’t want to hurt me. That’s the only way it can work.”

“Like this?” He unlaced his fingers, calloused hands sliding to close around her wrists. A shiver rippled through her and she could not help but gasp and shift her hips against him, watching a flush rise in his face. 

“Yes,” she breathed. “Please,” she begged. 

He pressed a long, lingering kiss to her lips as he held her wrists in place above her head. She shifted her hips again and he gasped slightly against her mouth, and tightened his grip around her wrists.

“I can’t do anything else if I’m holding you down,” he said against her lips. 

It was her deepest desire, her most hidden wish. Her heart was pounding in her throat, and she looked to the side. She could not meet his eyes as she asked for the thing she had always wanted to try the most.

“You could…tie me down,” she suggested, mouth dry.

“Tie you?” his voice broke. She cringed. “You _want_ that?”

“I don’t know why,” she admitted in a whisper, still not looking at him. “I know it’s wrong, I know it’s shameful—“

He cut her off with a kiss, and she closed her eyes, slipping her tongue past his lips. They broke apart.

“Promise me,” he breathed, “that you’ll tell me if you want to stop.”

She looked at him sharply.

“You’ll do it…?”

He didn’t answer her; he released her wrists and traveled down her body, kissing between her breasts, letting one hand cup her breast, thumb caressing her nipple and making her squirm as he kissed down to her naval. He was tugging on her robe, and she realized he was pulling the tie out from under her, so she arched her back to help him. The tie slipped away, and then he was hovering over her again, and she stretched her arms, holding her wrists together, breathless as he knelt above her and gently, sweetly, wrapped the tie around her wrists, and pulled the knot tight. And then, she realized with a jolt that went straight to her cunt, that he was tying it around the frame of her cast-iron headboard, and tight, too. She had never been so wet.

“Is that—“

“—Don’t worry,” she said hastily, “I’ll say if something is wrong. Don’t ask anymore.”

His brows knit together once more as he studied her, looking so sad. But then he was kissing her again, hard and fierce, and she whimpered into the kiss, writhing against his hips desperately, feeling his hardness against her cunt. One hand was braced next to her head, the other gripping her hip, and he let go only to push her robe out of the way, so that she was completely bare to him, and then began kissing down her body. He kissed between her breasts and then his lips grazed over her breast, before his teeth abruptly nipped at her nipple, sending another shock of desire and making her gasp and arch her back, pressing her nipple back into his mouth and moaning as he teased it with his tongue. His other hand went to her other breast, pinching and stroking her nipple, and she grinded her hips harder against him, desperately.

She was dizzy, she was drowning. He began kissing and biting her other nipple, hair tickling the skin of her breasts, and she whimpered and whined so wantonly that she should have been ashamed, but she was too filled with lust to be ashamed. The robe belt was digging into her wrists deliciously. He had total control over her. Why she did want that? She didn’t want anyone else to have total control over her; the very idea was repellent. But she had been fantasizing about this for so many years, and now it was happening, and his hands and lips and tongue were so skilled, and her sheets beneath her arse were soaked with her desire, sticking uncomfortably to her skin.

And then cold air rushed over her wet nipples as he moved further down, nipping at the skin beneath her belly button, and she realized where his mouth was traveling to just as his teeth grazed her hipbone. He held onto her breasts still, thumbs circling her nipples slowly, unbearably slowly, before flicking over them and making twin jolts of desire shoot through her, before he finally let go.

“What are you— _oh_.” His mouth was on her cunt, tongue traveling between her lips, beard tickling and scratching at her lips and inner thighs, as he lifted her legs so they were over his shoulder, and his hair, wilder than ever, fell across her lower pelvis, tickling her skin. His tongue was toying with her, seeking and tasting, and she felt him groan into her, the vibrations of his growl hitting her core and making her whimper again as she writhed against him, needing _more_ even as she was flushed with shame. He was tasting her most private place—she had never heard of this act before, had never even fantasized about it, but nothing had ever felt so good. It was all too much—the scratch of his beard and the cool air on her wet nipples and his warm, skilled tongue teasing her folds, and the robe tie digging into her wrists, just slightly uncomfortably. Something was rising, flying higher and higher, circling…and then he was slipping a finger inside of her as his tongue teased her cunt, and she gasped as he pressed his finger inside of her, curling against her wall and hitting a place deep inside her. She gasped and whined and begged in senseless words as his lips and tongue and finger found a rhythm, a relentless rhythm, that sent something straight through her, as she rocked against him. He slid another finger inside, stretching her. And, suddenly, she was bucking and shuddering against his mouth, but he still did not relent, coaxing her down from her orgasm with his fingers and lips.

He pulled back, chin slick with her desire, face flushed and eyes dark.

“Take me,” she pleaded, ashamed of her desperation. His eyes flicked to the ties around her wrists, then back to her eyes with a question. She bit her lip. “Hard. Please.” 

She saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, knelt before her, hands grazing over her thighs, up her hips, then over her breasts again. He pinched her nipple without warning and she writhed, arching her back. He let go and crawled over her to kiss her again. 

She tasted herself on his lips; she tasted like the sea. He pressed his forehead to hers as he entered her, slowly, and they breathed in each other's breath as she gasped at the feeling of being filled by him. He reached up, undoing the tie from the bed frame, and guided her bound wrists over his head, around his neck. She dug her nails into his smooth skin as he gripped her hips and, without warning, pulled out from her and lifted her up. Her back was against the wall and she gripped his hips with her legs as he pushed into her again, strong hands gripping her arse, holding her up as they gasped into each other's mouths. He liked it when she clawed against his back, she realized. He growled into her every time she did it, thrust into her a bit harder, so she did it more, scratching against his skin, digging her nails in, until he was pounding into her with so much force that she could not help but cry out with each thrust. 

They stumbled back from the wall, and then he threw her down on the bed once more, falling with her, and they writhed together as he slid inside her again. She was soaked with sweat and he was, too, their skin slick and hair clinging to their skin messily. He reached up and pulled the robe tie undone, then gripped her wrists and pinned her down as his pace increased, and he hovered over her, their eyes meeting once more. 

"L-like this?" he gasped, tightening his grip on her wrists, and she could only gasp and nod, unable to look away from his lovely eyes. Somehow this was the most intimate of all. Her bed was creaking, the headboard hitting the wall with each thrust, the wall that they shared. She wondered, briefly, if Mr. Baratheon could hear them. The walls were so thin, after all. Somehow the thought both thrilled and disgusted her, but she couldn't hold onto it too long, for she was rising again, and Jon's breathing was growing more ragged, his movements more wild. She arched into him, begging mindlessly; she did not even know what she was begging for. And then, suddenly: "I-I have to-" 

He pressed his forehead hers and slid out of her just as her release crashed over her, making her buck and shudder beneath him, and she felt something wet and hot spill onto her abdomen, pooling near one hipbone, and then he fell against her, as they gasped and shuddered, burying his face between her breasts. 

For a long time they lay there as their breathing slowed, and the night settled around them. Her wrists were throbbing with perfect pain in time with the throb between her legs. Everything smelled like sex; it was thicker than perfume in the air. 

"Can I stay?" he whispered against her skin. She twined a hand in his damp curls, pressing him against her. 

"Please."

Her mind was blissfully blank, her body light as air. Perhaps this was how Jon felt after every fight, relishing the vital ache of his body, the singular knowledge that he had survived something. They each drifted off to sleep, a deep, dreamless sleep, limbs tangled and heavy and damp. 

Outside, in the alleyway, Stannis turned away from the wall. He had been standing beneath her window. They were done, it seemed. His body on fire and fists throbbing from broken glass, he went back to his own dark home. 

 


End file.
